This literature review addresses how socio-cognitive theory may inform the understanding of childhood aggression. Though there are a range of approaches to the topic of aggression, the aim here is to focus on two specific cognitive theories: firstly, the hostile attributional bias (Dodge, 1980) which is an empirically robust theory of social cognition applied extensively to children and, secondly, anger rumination (Sukhodolsky, Golub and Cromwell, 2001), a cognitive style associated with aggressive behaviour in adults. The potential to adapt theories of adult cognition to children and adolescence, distinctions between relational and physical aggression and the importance of gender and methodology will be discussed.